Wednesday 31 July 2013

SIPHON


Each day presents us with an overflowing cup of potential. How we draw out that potential is a choice.  We can either siphon it out by choosing to focus on a steady stream of negativity (which entails dwelling on the failures of yesterday). Or, we can sip the potential out, savoring the experience of right now as it unfolds, minute by minute.  

Take a deep breath and savour.

Tuesday 30 July 2013

SOON


Soon is a place of perfection.  A place where our ducks sit in a row.  Where stars align and every contingency is planned for.  Soon is a list with more check boxes than check marks.  

Soon is what we wait for as our life passes us by.

Monday 29 July 2013

PATH


Achieving a state of serenity is not dependent on whether people and things cooperate  with us and “start acting right” in order for it to descend on us.  All is already aligned for serenity.  The problem is that we look out to find it, when it has always resided within.

Our perspective, how we look at things, whether we’re the martyr, victim or bully, under-achiever or over-achiever, spinning our wheels or feeling entitled, has everything to do with whether serenity escapes us or wether we know the path to it like the back of our hand.

Sunday 28 July 2013

OPEN


We can’t expect to be received openly and lovingly if we don’t lead with love and acceptance.  The way we lead with love and acceptance is by not being judgmental, by not dismissing someone by the way they look, or the way they act.  We have no way of knowing what’s going on in their lives.  We have no way of knowing who people truly are, what their story is.

It’s not how we would want to be judged is it? 

WHY NOT YOU?


Trials, tribulations, challenges, bad days, failures, why you?  Why not you?  

If we’re lucky, really, really lucky, our lives will have all of these struggles in it.  How else can we tell how strong we really are?  How else can our life be an education, how can it be growth?  

AWE


Each day we should cultivate awe.  Awe is wordless, jaw-dropping wonder.  If you think that your life is not big enough to contain awe, think again.  Look at your children, trees, sky, clouds, birds, your pet.  Awe is all around us all the time.  We really just need to pay attention to what's around us right now. 

DHARMA


It’s about our life calling.  It’s not about our dreams because dreams suggest a certain wishing, a far off vague idea. Dharma is baked in, it’s part of our nature.  But it’s inert, it’s up to us to pay attention and bring it to life.

WE ARE EITHER...


Improving, growing or decaying.  Fear factors into all of these.  The difference is in how much influence we allow fear to have.

ART


Living our life as art means that we’re creative in our approach and brave in its execution.

CENTER


Living in the center of ourselves requires that we find who we really are so that we can not only recognize it, but when we lose our way, be guided back to it.

FLAWED


Abandonment whether emotionally, psychologically or physically is the foundation of every feeling of unworthiness that we experience.

CRUSHING


Some of us don’t dare wish for a big life, or push ourselves to be the best that we can be because the specter of perhaps failing stops us cold.  We’re afraid to be crushed by the prospect of disappointment.  

The problem with this approach is that we preclude any possibility of success AND we never find out that any disappointment that we may encounter will not kill us - in fact, as the saying goes, it will make us stronger.

Ironically missing the opportunity to succeed and grow stronger is the true crushing blow.

LIES


There is nothing more toxic in our lives than lies.  It’s not the lies we tell others, the highest toxicity comes from the lies we tell ourselves.

TOO BIG FOR OUR BRITCHES


“People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”  Isaac Asimov 

Sometimes we’re so busy trying to help others we overlook the fact that some insight might be of really good use to us.

TRUTH


People SHOW us who they really are.  They can TELL you whatever they want.

MEANING


Words, especially the ones we tell ourselves can wound, maim and oftentimes kill our spirit, our self esteem our sense of who we think we are. 

Imagine hearing that voice using those words addressing a child or an animal.  Would you be surprised, appalled, taken aback?  Would you think it was abusive?

It is.  The way we talk to ourselves is nothing short of abusive.  We can’t possibly feel worthy of a big, loving, healthy life.

LOVE


If we long desperately to fall in love are we actually not longing desperately to fall in love with ourselves?

FOOD FOR THOUGHT


I love this.  Nutritious and delicious. http://www.brainpickings.org/

MUCH ADO


Drama is the realm of those that need to be perpetually distracted.  Fear rules supreme.

Wednesday 24 July 2013

GUESS


The best we can ever do about making a decision is to make a guess.  In business it would be called making projections.  Basically the same thing, we’re guessing about what will happen in the future.

Two things about guessing: 
  1. Because we’re prognosticating about what might be, whether we’re trying to figure out what our sales figures will be in the next quarter, or deciding on paint colour for the living room, it stirs up a lot of anxiety and fear.  The anxiety and fear leads to all kinds of truly unhelpful behaviour, from getting and staying stuck to chronic procrastination.
  2. The most helpful guessing comes from gathering intel and letting go of the outcome.  In terms of projecting for revenue for the next quarter, it means we gather results from previous quarters around the same time period, calculate the median value and voilà, next quarter’s projections.  We then let go of the idea of being right.  

This is the HUGE part.  LETTING GO OF NEEDING TO BE RIGHT.  Unless you’re a practical physicist or brain surgeon, we all have some significant latitude in being wrong.  The reality is that for most of us, not being right doesn’t mean blowing up the planet or performing an unnecessary lobotomy.  
The most helpful guesses simply require that we gather as much information as we can, then leap. Allow the future to unfold, let go of the need to control and be right.  It’s an impossibility anyway.  The question however is, if we know worrying and trying to control outcomes is pointless, then why do we insist on doing it?  

Digging into that question might provide us with some very useful information.

FEAR


This is a difficult concept for us to wrap our brain around.  We don’t run away from fear because if we’re busy running away from fear we’re actually holding on to it (as per the previous post).  Not only that, but we simply will never get rid of or outrun fear.  Fear is part and parcel of the human experience, of what makes us who we are.

The trick is to not let fear rule our life.  Not letting it make the decisions for us.

FUTURE


We can’t predict the future so why do we spend so much time trying to get into it?  We miss the present, which is all we really have, we miss what’s happening right now because we’re trying to chase down something that is impossible to know.  The future.  

Futurizing, or fretting about what’s going to happen, running down scenarios of what we’re afraid might happen is actually attracting all of that to us.  Let me repeat:  WHAT WE FOCUS ON, WE ATTRACT.

The thing is, if we concentrate more on RIGHT NOW, really appreciate what’s in front and around us, feel love and gratitude for THE HERE AND NOW, we have a much greater impact on the future being what we really want it to be.  

Wednesday 17 July 2013

DID THE BEST


We never do our best in a vacuum.  When we’re living our life thinking that we’re doing our best we experience continuous feedback that lets us know whether we’re getting the results we want.  If that feedback is providing us with results we don’t want, then we need to adjust what we’re doing to a NEW kind of best.  

And yet, we hear so often, ‘they did their best,” or, “I’m doing my best.”  NO.  I would say.  What we’re doing is what’s easiest.  We’re ignoring the feedback that’s telling us that our so called best is not providing us with the results we want, but refuse, can’t, won’t, are afraid, lazy....whatever, to change what we’re doing.

IGNORANCE


Ignorance can only be used as an excuse if we are morally bankrupt in the first place.   And if we are morally bankrupt in the first place then ignorance is the least of our worries.  

It is disturbing when heinous acts are justified but the total loss of morality as in the reframing of the context.  For example, “rules for research on humans were just being formulated and adopted by the scientific community."  Seriously?

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/07/16/aboriginal-nutritional-experiment_n_3605503.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

Friday 12 July 2013

PERFECT


Maybe today isn’t going perfect.  So what?  Do you throw every remaining minute away?  ABSOLUTELY NOT.   On the days when every plan has gone sideways, every ounce of control has been taken from us we have to relegate that time to history as fast as it passes us.  That’s when our history is so close we feel it nip at our heels.  
If you think about it, it’s a form of perfection all on its own because the minute we relegate that ‘wasted’ time to our history, we are presented with new time full of potential.  

The only time wasted is that spent on dwelling on what’s past because it robs us of time better invested in future possibility.

Thursday 11 July 2013

NAME IT


A dysfunction is a feeling, sometimes a very vague one at that.  When we’re around certain people for example, we feel a gripping sensation around our chest.  Or, talking with our boss we feel a tightness in our solar plexus.  In competitive circumstances we feel a sense of exhilaration that we don’t feel at any other time.   Anger, shame, fear, feelings that when they surface out of context are a signal that they are surfacing from past pain, ancient suffering that has nothing to do with the situation at hand. 

In other words, the anxiety produced by our boss is a response to what our boss represents, which is authority.  If authority meant total control over our life growing up, then our boss comes to define someone who has control over our life, someone to fear, someone to obey.  

Our dysfunctional feelings are responses to representations, they are not a response to reality.  This is why we suffer.  So if we thrive in competitive circumstances it’s because winning means being better, being loved, being worthy.  We know that competition is not a healthy source of validation of our worthiness.  This is what it means to respond to representations and not reality.  

Digging down to the origin of the representation allows us to name that dysfunction.  Once we name it, we recognize it for what it is, we have the power to make much healthier connections.

STOP PAYING IT FORWARD


If the same stuff keeps showing up in our lives, the stuff that makes us suffer, at some point we have to realize that we’re asking for it to show up.  How are we doing that?  By dipping into the same well of dysfunction that created the suffering in the first place.   

Here’s the thing.  If we don’t become consciously aware of our family of origin dysfunction, it -- that dysfunction, will continue to make the decisions for us.  THE DYSFUNCTION WILL MAKE THE DECISIONS FOR US.

It is the suffering that was paid forward by our parents who received suffering from their parents and so on down our family tree.  It is not about laying blame.  That doesn’t serve anyone.  But it is about us taking responsibility for refusing to accept that suffering in our lives any longer.  It’s about stopping that cycle with us.  The only way to stop it is to understand what you’re dealing with in the first place.  It’s the only way we’ll be able to steer our decisions in a healthy direction.

Friday 5 July 2013

ATTITUDE


While it’s true that we have control over very little in our lives - the truth is that we do have control over one of the most important aspects -- our attitude, what goes on in our heads.  The way we interpret what happens to us, how we respond to people and things, affects in a huge way, how we experience our life.   

Glass half empty or half full is about attitude, not a platitude.

Wednesday 3 July 2013

HURT


Relationships shouldn’t hurt.  Not even a little bit.  Yet they do.  A lot.  

If we’re on the receiving end of the pain we really need to evaluate why we’re staying around. In other words, what is our dysfunction that enables this behaviour toward us.  

If we’re on the perpetrating end we need to discover the source of our toxicity that has us convinced that our behaviour is okay.

Monday 1 July 2013

ALLIES


Our instincts are our allies.  Yet more often than not we don’t like what they’re telling us so we choose to ignore them.  Not until we have a huge disaster on our hands do we look back and have to admit that our instincts were right all along. This is especially true when deciding whether to trust people. 

Here’s the thing, our instincts are legitimate.  It doesn’t matter whether you’ve got 100 people telling you you’re wrong, if you’re instinct is telling you to back away from a certain person, then walk away.